For goodness sakes, don't go re-watch that pile of space debris and encourage that shameless hack George Lucas to further desecrations. Remember this epic beatdown of "The Phantom Menace" and recall just how truly awful that flick was. Plus, imagine the utter bone-chilling horror of JAR-JAR BINKS IN 3D. I'm sure that's a human rights violation. I wouldn't wish a 3-D Jar-Jar on my worst enemy. (I might be evil, but I have standards.)

I'm thinking about getting these boots since the weather is getting cooler. Imagine them with both short and long skirts and perhaps some nice sweaters. Is the red too much? I can get them in other, less flashy colors too...

Straight out of Walden comes this timeless observation by Henry David Thoreau:

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

This is very much in line with what C.S. Lewis said:

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

I stumbled across this review recently, and I do have to say, if you've never seen "Glory," you really must. It is, in a nutshell, one of the best movies ever made about the American Civil War (and about race relations in the US history as seen through individuals). The cast is excellent throughout, though I would be remiss if I did not point out Denzel Washington's outstanding performance that won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Holding a rating of 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, "Glory" runs 122 minutes and is rated R for some graphic battlefield violence.

Monday, September 27, 2010

The real problem with [the locavore idea] isn't economic elitism but produce xenophobia. The locavore ideal is a world without trade, not only beyond national borders but even from the next state: no Florida oranges in Colorado or California grapes in New Mexico, no Vidalia onions in New York or summer spinach in Georgia.

Fully realized, that ideal would eliminate one of the great culinary advances of the past half century. Unripe peaches notwithstanding, today's supermarket produce departments are modern marvels. American grocery shoppers have choices that would have been unimaginable only a few decades ago. When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, the only way to get fresh spinach or leaf lettuce was to plant a garden. Avocados were an exotic treat, asparagus came in a can, and pomegranates existed only in books.

This list is, of course, subject to debate! I for one cannot stand James Joyce. Oh, here, let me give you the top 3 novel openings. I approve of the first two, though I think the opening of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities should have ranked higher than Gravity's Rainbow.

1. Call me Ishmael. —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)

Christian Toto points out a new film that may make the history of John Rabe a bit less obscure. Who was Rabe? A German businessman in China in the 1930s, he helped to save thousands of Chinese civilian lives during imperial Japan's horrifying Rape of Nanking (1937-8).

Japanese-British writer Kazuo Ishiguro's 2005 book Never Let Me Go. There is a movie version now (starring Andrew Garfield, Carey Mulligan, and Keira Knightley), and I wanted to read the book first. The movie, by the way, has been getting mixed positive reviews such as this and this.

I can’t remember a time when there’s been such a coordinated effort to marginalize and impugn the motives of so many of this nation’s citizens.

I’m not sure how they [desperate Democrats] plan to balance their oft-heralded concerns for the middle class with their attempts to paint so many of its members as ignorant racists, but it’ll be fun to see them try.

True dat! But what do I know? I'm just an ignorant bitter racist hater clinging to my guns and Bible.

Recent research at Harvard Business School began with the premise that as a state's congressional delegation grew in stature and power in Washington, D.C., local businesses would benefit from the increased federal spending sure to come their way.

It turned out quite the opposite. In fact, professors Lauren Cohen, Joshua Coval, and Christopher Malloy discovered to their surprise that companies experienced lower sales and retrenched by cutting payroll, R&D, and other expenses. Indeed, in the years that followed a congressman's ascendancy to the chairmanship of a powerful committee, the average firm in his state cut back capital expenditures by roughly 15 percent, according to their working paper, "Do Powerful Politicians Cause Corporate Downsizing?"

"It was an enormous surprise, at least to us, to learn that the average firm in the chairman's state did not benefit at all from the unanticipated increase in spending," Coval reports.

Plus this added bit from the Q-and-A with the professors:

Our findings suggest that they [public policymakers] should revisit their belief that federal spending can stimulate private economic development. It is important to note that our research ignores all costs associated with paying for the spending such as higher taxes or increased borrowing. From the perspective of the target state, the funds are essentially free, but clearly at the national level someone has to pay for stimulus spending. And in the absence of a positive private-sector response, it seems even more difficult to justify federal spending than otherwise.

the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration held its much-publicized hearing with Comedy Central comedian Stephen Colbert on hand to offer testimony. As John Conyers notes, the media and spectators turned out to see whether Colbert would address the panel seriously as an expert on immigration and make the panel a joke, or stay in character and make the panel a bigger joke.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

From La Parisienne comes this loopy news story from Cambridge, Mass. (Well, I'm not surprised at any lunacy coming from the town that harbors Hahvahd ... but that's another tale.) I can only repeat and endorse the lovely Parisienne's comment: "You can't make this stuff up."
I don't know about you, but if I got a parking ticket, I'd sigh and go about my business. If I got a parking ticket with yoga poses printed on it, I would fly into a frothing rage on the spot because that's adding insult to injury. In fact, I'm starting to feel a bit rage-y just thinking about it. I've only ever seen one positive occurrence of someone enforcing parking rules, and I post it after the fold, as a thank-you to La Parisienne.

Well, yes. ABSOLUTELY. Oh, and who made this observation? Walter Russell Mead, the Henry Kissinger senior fellow for US foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College. Here is a great bit of literary criticism after the fold:

From the video: "Exploitation is not exclusively capitalist, but wealth creation is."

From the article: "The intellectual critics of capitalism believe they know what is good for us, but millions of people interacting in the marketplace keep rebuffing them. This, ultimately, is why they believe capitalism is “bad for the soul”: it fulfils human needs without first seeking their moral approval."

Saturday, September 18, 2010

I begin this movie review with a comment from La Parisienne, whom I texted right after I saw the movie. In reply to my initial enthusiastic response, she said, "I'm not sure how I feel about you praising Affleck." Oh, it's true -- after Ben Affleck's long purgatory in tabloid "Bennifer" and Gigli misery, after the Cine-Sib and I sniped at him with the demeaning nickname "Manfleck," we were all of us more or less wondering, "What's wrong with Ben Affleck?" while his pal Matt Damon went zooming off to box office stardom with the Bourne movies.

Then there was 2007's Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck's debut as director, and it made me stop poking fun at him. It also made me sit up and pay attention to Casey Affleck bursting onto the scene as a serious acting talent in his own right -- but that's another review. Gone Baby Gone was a revelation, and it was the moment when I thought, "Hey, maybe Affleck's better as a director than an actor" and "So let's see if he can make us forget that 'Bennifer' and Gigli ever happened. Win our love back, Ben. Make us remember how delighted we were to meet you in Good Will Hunting. Show us you've grown up." Meanwhile, I'm hoping and praying that Gone Baby Gone wasn't just a one-off fluke.

The Town, Ben Affleck's sophomore project as director (he is also a co-writer), isn't quite as good as the stunning Gone Baby Gone, but it is still fantastic storytelling. It is a gritty urban crime drama that is also a personal psychological drama and, in its way, a love letter to Affleck's childhood home of Boston.

Friday, September 17, 2010

The total butcher's bill could be as high as 45 million dead in a four-year-long span of time. 45 million, to say nothing of the millions more whose lives were thrown into misery and chaos. And then there's that monster Mao Zedong, the worst mass murderer in modern history (or any history?). I cannot even begin to tell you how much I hate this man.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

This British film critic has a hilarious smackdown of Julia Roberts' latest flick. Here's my favorite bit of it:

At one point, Javier Bardem runs her over with his car. That part was okay.

The review also contains this brilliant assessment of how banal "chick flicks" can be:

I’m just so bored of ladies and their emotions doing stuff – and, worse, the assumption that those three elements alone (ladies, emotions, stuff) are enough to constitute entertainment for other ladies.

Bravo! I for one hate "chick flicks" and would gladly see just about anything else. Earlier this week I wrote a paper while watching the "Godfather" trilogy (I didn't like the third one as much as the first two, though Andy Garcia is always fun to watch).

What is unique about the US – and indispensable to the understanding of it – is that it is a country of the displaced and dispossessed: a nation which invented itself for the very purpose of permitting people to reinvent themselves, to take their fate into their own hands, to be liberated from the persecution and the paternalism of the old cultures they had left behind. Almost every American either is himself, or is descended from, someone who made a conscious decision to pull up his roots and take his chances in a land he had almost certainly never seen and which, until quite recently, offered no protection or security if the gamble failed.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

What fresh (or really, recycled) hell is this? The latest round of nannyish preaching and finger-wagging by Mrs. Obama about food and how we should change how and what we eat is the same dull blah-blah-blah you've come to expect from any number of killjoy interfering do-gooders. But what really is worth your time is the choice of photos that accompany the text of the First Lady's annoying sermon to the National Restaurant Association. Kudos to whomever did the photo layout!

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Look at this lovely recipe from the fantastic recipe website They Draw and Cook. Click on it to make it bigger so you can see all the details. (By the way, I never use margarine. If you're going to make a sweet, do it the right way. Use real butter!)

Recruiters say graduates of top public universities are often among the most prepared and well-rounded academically, and companies have found they fit well into their corporate cultures and over time have the best track record in their firms.

The cost-spiral in higher education over the last several decades has not been warranted by improvements in the quality of actual education. It has been driven by excessive federal subsidy in the forms of student loans; by a buyer psychology that led many families to think that college was a virtually risk-free investment; by colleges and universities that chose to compete with each other in expensive amenities atmospherics rather than academic substance; and by a spirit of grandiosity.

Do read the whole thing. The comparison to the bursting bubble of tulipomania is all too apt. Also? I can't tell you how maddening it is to see university after university spend a gazillion dollars on crazy amenities instead of substance. Oh, yes, let's build (insert loopy feel-good project here) while we let the libraries molder and fall into dust. (Oh, even better, let's spend a gazillion dollars making sure the admin have huge posh offices with all the tip-top modern conveniences and ever-inflating six-figure salaries while adjuncts and lecturers -- you know, the people who actually teach -- cram into shared cramped offices and have to work on a shoestring budget with a shoestring paycheck.)

Saturday, September 11, 2010

"Look, I don't know, maybe I haven't made myself completely clear, so for the record, here it is again," said the Lord, His divine face betraying visible emotion during a press conference near the site of the fallen Twin Towers. "Somehow, people keep coming up with the idea that I want them to kill their neighbor. Well, I don't. And to be honest, I'm really getting sick and tired of it. Get it straight. Not only do I not want anybody to kill anyone, but I specifically commanded you not to, in really simple terms that anybody ought to be able to understand."

"I don't care how holy somebody claims to be," God said. "If a person tells you it's My will that they kill someone, they're wrong. Got it? I don't care what religion you are, or who you think your enemy is, here it is one more time: No killing, in My name or anyone else's, ever again."

The press conference came as a surprise to humankind, as God rarely intervenes in earthly affairs. As a matter of longstanding policy, He has traditionally left the task of interpreting His message and divine will to clerics, rabbis, priests, imams, and Biblical scholars. Theologians and laymen alike have been given the task of pondering His ineffable mysteries, deciding for themselves what to do as a matter of faith. His decision to manifest on the material plane was motivated by the deep sense of shock, outrage, and sorrow He felt over the Sept. 11 violence carried out in His name, and over its dire potential ramifications around the globe.

... "There's no such thing as a holy war, only unholy ones. The vast majority of Muslims in this world reject the murderous actions of these radical extremists ..."

Continued God, "Read the book: 'Allah is kind, Allah is beautiful, Allah is merciful.' It goes on and on that way, page after page. But, no, some ***holes have to come along and revive this stupid holy-war cr*p just to further their own hateful agenda."

You know the drill. Wherever I have a pile of research and writing and nerd work to do, I put on movies for background noise. I can't work in total silence. It drives me crazy -- or I fall asleep on top of my books and papers. So this time around, it's all hail the glories of streaming Netflix as we take a look at some classic films. I was thinking I'd try to watch movies starring a particular well-regarded actor or actress, so I started off with Marlon Brando. So here's what's up.

Stewart takes hilarious potshots at everything in this new video, with some real gems such as turning midterm elections into football, playing with the idea of "death panels," and taking aim at Obama's (ludicrous) new idea of spending $50 billion on infrastructure projects. Dude, wasn't that a huge chunk of the FIRST stimulus (that ended up doing about as much good as simply setting money on fire?)...? Oh, and Jon, honey, I am soooooo glad you got rid of that scruffy beard! Those facial anomalies did nothing good for you, sweetie.

I asked him if he believed the Cuban model was still something worth exporting.

"The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore," he said.

This struck me as the mother of all Emily Litella moments. Did the leader of the Revolution just say, in essence, "Never mind"?

I asked Julia to interpret this stunning statement for me. She said, "He wasn't rejecting the ideas of the Revolution. I took it to be an acknowledgment that under 'the Cuban model' the state has much too big a role in the economic life of the country." [My emphasis -- MM]

Julia pointed out that one effect of such a sentiment might be to create space for his brother, Raul, who is now president, to enact the necessary reforms in the face of what will surely be push-back from orthodox communists within the Party and the bureaucracy. Raul Castro is already loosening the state's hold on the economy. He recently announced, in fact, that small businesses can now operate and that foreign investors could now buy Cuban real estate.

Well, well, well. Look who's finally got a taste of cold hard reality. Hm: "the state has much too big a role in the economic life of the country." HEH. Statists, listen up! Oh, and didn't I just post about this sort of idea?

By the way, I didn't come up with the phrase "crackbrained meddling by authorities" and how they can "aggravate an existing crisis." You might be surprised who did. Check out venerable economist Thomas Sowell's recent analysis. Here's a bit more.

This is pretty darn brilliantly funny! Get another song stuck in your head instead. I clicked on it and got "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees, so now I am stuck in the disco era. (Which, depending on your mood, may not be a bad thing!)

Sunday, September 05, 2010

The winners of the 2010 Hugo Awards have been announced, and I am delighted that two of my favorite sci fi productions of 2009 were among them: "Moon" for Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) and the Doctor Who episode "The Waters of Mars" for Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form). Yes indeedy -- Hugo and I have excellent taste!
I raved about "Moon" last summer, and I also told you about how emotionally effective "Waters of Mars" was. Both of these productions go beyond fluffy fun to consider some Big Ideas such as the meaning and worth of an individual human being ("Moon") and the temptation to power that acknowledges no limit ("Waters of Mars"). Both of them are riveting examples of writing and storytelling, even as they will probably twist your insides as they did mine. They will give you chills. Kudos too to the actors who made the stories work -- Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell and David Tennant as the Doctor.

Here you go, kids, so have at it over the 3-day weekend! There is, of course, lots of room for argument.
(For instance? The writer didn't like "Firefly"'s episode "Shindig," which I absolutely adore. And "Supernatural" isn't on the list at all ... though I'll be the first to admit it's (a) more a guilty pleasure than a classic, and (b) La Parisienne and the Kamikaze Editor and I all thought the most recent season was mostly a crashing bore. Still, I've got a bone to pick with the list if it's going to include "Torchwood"-- and recommend the deplorable "Children of Earth" story! -- and not "Supernatural" which, at its best, gave us snappily witty, tongue-in-cheek, meta-theatrical episodes like "Hollywood Babylon," "Monster Movie," and "Changing Channels." Also, how can "Farscape" not be on this list?!)

I pretty much love almost all the 20 shows on the list, but if I had to choose 5 listed shows that you MUST watch, I pick the following in alphabetical order:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

the new Doctor Who (i.e., Nine, Ten, and now Eleven)

Firefly

The Prisoner

Star Trek

You still must watch "Farscape," though. Oh, and I heartily recommend the BBC "Life On Mars" also, though it's arguably not quite as obviously sci-fi as some of the other shows on the list. But if the list can include "Lost," then I don't see why it can't include a crime drama that plays with the idea of reality, time, and consciousness. The new "V" is fun too, and "Journeyman" is a "Firefly"-esque sad tale of what might have been if it had lasted longer. "Kings" is a hard-to-classify bit of actual creativity. On the animated side, you can't beat "Futurama" with a stick.

Here is the first teaser poster. I could not care less about Orlando Bloom or Milla Jovovich (though she could be a very good Milady). I'm excited about Ray Stevenson, Mads Mikkelsen, Christoph Waltz, and -- especially -- Matthew Macfadyen, who will be playing Athos. Oh, he's perfect. (UPDATE: Alessandra says so too, so it must be true!)

Check out this staggering analysis by an economics professor at the University of Michigan. The bubble is on the verge of bursting. Hmmm ... Haven't I been yelling about this for ... apparently forever?

Get a traditional liberal education; it is the only thing that will do you any good.

This is hard; a liberal education is no easy thing to get, and not everybody wants you to have one. However, in times of rapid change, it is paradoxically more useful to immerse yourself in the basics and the classics than to try to keep up with the latest developments and hottest trends. You can be almost 100% sure that the hot theories making waves in academia today will be forgotten or superseded in twenty years — but fifty years from now people will still be reading and thinking about the classic texts that have shaped our world. Use your college years to ground yourself in the basic great books and key ideas and values that will last.